Böcker utgivna av Mdpi AG

A Special Issue of the international journal Sustainability under the section Sustainability of Culture & Heritage has been made, entitled Natural Sciences in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage. The bridge between science/technology and the humanities (archaeology, anthropology, history of art, and cultural heritage) has formed a well-established interdisciplinary subject with several sub-disciplines; it is growing exponentially, spurred by the fast development of technology in other fields (space exploration, medical, military, and industrial applications). On the other hand, art and culture struggle to survive due to neglect, lack of funding, or the dangers of events such as natural disasters and war. This volume strengthens and exerts the documentation of the sustainability of the issue that arises from the outcome of resulting research and the application of such a duality link. The sustainable dimension emerges from society, education, and economics through the impact of cultural growth, all of which produce a balanced society, in which prosperity, harmony, and development are merged at a sustainable local/regional/national/social level. A wide range of subjects linking the applied natural sciences with archaeology and the cultural heritage of innovative research and applications are presented in this volume.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), which are a type of short non-coding RNA, are involved in number of processes, such as differentiation, development, inflammation, immune response, and cancer. miRNAs, which act as oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes, can control and regulate the translation and stability of target messenger RNA, contributing to cancer pathogenesis. Despite the progress that has been made in discovering the mechanisms of how miRNAs function in tumors, many questions and aspects of miRNA biology and processing still remain to be determined. This Special Issue, titled "MicroRNA in Solid Tumor and Hematological Diseases", provides a panorama of the existing knowledge gaps and potential uses of microRNAs to predict clinical outcome or response to therapies and provides evidence to explain their role as biomarkers to modulate the biological pathways that are critical for cancer development and progression. It includes eleven peer-reviewed papers that cover the role of microRNAs in different tumor types and their potential applications in diagnosis and clinical approaches.

At present, more and more procedures and technologies used to discover and characterize new materials are available, including advanced characterization techniques.This Special Issue covers a wide range of topics about obtaining and characterizing new materials, from the nano to macro scales, including for new alloys, ceramics, composites, biomaterials, and polymers and the procedures and technologies used to enhance their structure, properties, and functions. To select new materials for future use, we must first understand their structure and their characteristics using modern techniques such as microscopy (SEM, TEM, AFM, STM, etc.), spectroscopy (EDX, XRD, XRF, FTIR, XPS, etc.), and mechanical tests (tensile, hardness, elastic modulus, toughness, etc.) and their behaviors (in vitro and in vivo; corrosion; and thermal-DSC, STA, DMA, magnetic properties, and biocompatibility), among many others.

The enteric protozoans Cryptosporidium spp. and Giardia duodenalis are the most common diarrhoea-causing protozoan parasites worldwide. Cryptosporidium spp. is a leading cause of diarrhoea morbidity and mortality in children younger than 5 years of age in poor-resource settings in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Although infection by G. duodenalis is rarely a fatal condition, giardiasis is commonly associated with childhood growth faltering and cognitive impairment. Because of their significant socioeconomic impact, particularly in low-income countries, giardiasis and cryptosporidiosis joined the "Neglected Disease Initiative" launched by the World Health Organization in 2004. Both Cryptosporidium spp. and G. duodenalis are ubiquitous in the environment and can infect a wide range of hosts with different specificities, meaning that humans may acquire the infection via waterborne, foodborne, or zoonotic transmission. Recent advances in detection and molecular epidemiology have indicated that certain species/genotypes of Cryptosporidium and G. duodenalis have an expanded range of suitable hosts, suggesting that their transmission pathways are more intricate than previously thought, challenging our current notion of host specificities. Therefore, there is a clear need for more studies  aiming at investigatingthat aim to investigate the frequency and molecular diversity of these parasites in humans, production and companion animals, and wildlife species. This information would be extremely useful to elucidate the transmission dynamics of cryptosporidiosis and giardiasis, and to investigate the exact contribution of zoonotic events to human infections.

This Special Issue is designed to celebrate the founding of the open-access journal Oceans and is focused on presenting new ideas and advances at the cutting edge of ocean science. The scope of this Special Issue includes, but is not limited to: ocean geosciences, physics, biogeochemistry, and ecology; ocean ecosystem services and sustainable ocean resource use; and ocean operations and engineering. The fifteen articles published in this Special Issue focus on diverse areas of oceanography, including ocean ecology and biology, ocean geosciences, ocean climate and meteorology, ocean circulation, ocean chemistry and biogeochemistry, ocean resources (e.g., fisheries, aquaculture, and mining), ocean engineering, ocean modeling and ocean governance.

The milk industry is largely based on dairy cattle production. After decades of great advancements in genetics, nutrition, and management, today, one cow can reach unprecedented levels of milk production. New challenges have been posed to preserving the health and welfare of these domestic animals. "High-Yielding Dairy Cows" is a collection of scientific papers focusing on three main areas: metabolic diseases, reproduction diseases, and herd (heath) management in confined and pasture production systems. This book aggregates knowledge from a molecular level to a more holistic approach on disease prevention and management, giving the reader an accurate overview of the current state of the art of this topic. It intends to contribute to ensuring the supply of ethical and responsible animal protein for about eight billion of people.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Non-canonical Kinases and Substrates in Cancer Progression" that was published in the scientific journal Cancers. It was edited by Francisco M. Vega, Ph.D. from the University of Seville in Spain. It brings together the latest views and original research on non-canonical protein kinases, substrates, and scaffolds

In many industrial applications, metallic materials are exposed to harsh operating conditions. Due to a combination of chemical and thermal stresses, the constructional and functional materials are degraded, and their utility properties are lost. These undesirable events are of a physicochemical nature and are commonly known as ''corrosion''. In this Special Issue Book, 3 reviews and 18 original research papers focused on the complex relationships between the microstructure, phase constitution, and corrosion behavior of metallic materials are collected. Both high temperature and low temperature corrosion studies are included as they investigate the physicochemical processes at the material interfaces. Furthermore, possibilities for increasing the corrosion resistance of metallic materials are studied by means of surface modification and application of protective layers. This Special Issue Book, Microstructure and Corrosion Behavior of Advanced Alloys, displays the diversity and complexity of modern corrosion research. It is hoped that it will become a valuable source of reference for corrosion scientists.

Fruit production has faced many challenges in recent years as society seeks to increase fruit consumption while increasing safety and reducing the harmful effects of intensive farming practices (e.g., pesticides and fertilizers). In the last 50 years, the population has more than doubled and is expected to grow to 9 billion people by 2050. Per capita consumption of fruit is also increasing during this time and the global fruit industry is facing a major challenge to produce enough fruit in quantity and quality. The need for sustainable production of nutritious food is critical for human and environmental health.This book provides some answers to people who are increasingly concerned about the sustainability of fruit production and the fruit industry as a whole.

Metals have always played a significant role in human life, and the current global growth and prosperity are directly dependent on these materials. With the rapidly growing global demand for metals, their extraction from natural minerals (as their primary sources) has been enhanced, causing a significant reduction in the grade and quality of the ores in ore deposits and leading to the production of huge amounts of waste, which requires management. In light of this, new proposals to develop more advanced metal recovery technologies from minerals are needed. Additionally, the huge quantity of waste generated through all steps of metal production is known to be a source of environmental pollution, while its valorization can create value via recycling metals or even though use in the production of other valuable materials. Such waste valorization is also in line with the United Nations'' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the implementation of the Paris Agreement. In this regard, the recycling of end-user products in order to reproduce valuable metals can also create significant value and reduce mining activities, and thus, their harmful consequences worldwide. Therefore, research and development in the state-of-the-art technologies for the recovery and recycling of metals are absolutely necessary. The aim of this Special Issue was to collect a range of articles on different aspects of valuable metal recovery and recycling from primary and secondary sources, as well as to decipher all new methods, processes, and knowledge in valuable metal production. We hope that this open access Special Issue will provide a great opportunity to demonstrate the work of researchers working in this area all around the world and help to provide new ideas for researchers who are working in the areas of hydrometallurgy, mineral processing, and waste recycling and valorization.

Nine manuscripts were published in this Special Issue on "Theoretical and Computational Research in Various Scheduling Models, 2021" of the MDPI Mathematics journal, covering a wide range of topics connected to the theory and applications of various scheduling models and their extensions/generalizations. These topics include a road network maintenance project, cost reduction of the subcontracted resources, a variant of the relocation problem, a network of activities with generally distributed durations through a Markov chain, idea on how to improve the return loading rate problem by integrating the sub-tour reversal approach with the method of the theory of constraints, an extended solution method for optimizing the bi-objective no-idle permutation flowshop scheduling problem, the burn-in (B/I) procedure, the Pareto-scheduling problem with two competing agents, and three preemptive Pareto-scheduling problems with two competing agents, among others. We hope that the book will be of interest to those working in the area of various scheduling problems and provide a bridge to facilitate the interaction between researchers and practitioners in scheduling questions. Although discrete mathematics is a common method to solve scheduling problems, the further development of this method is limited due to the lack of general principles, which poses a major challenge in this research field.